Plots & Ploys: Bulldozing Buffett

Part of famed investor Warren Buffett’s legacy is set to be bulldozed this week.

On the scaffold: a small, vacant office building in New Bedford, Mass., that once housed the headquarters of Berkshire Hathaway, the now-defunct textile manufacturer and namesake of Mr. Buffett’s investment empire. Its owner plans to demolish the building as early as Thursday or Friday.

New Bedford Mayor Jon Mitchell had waged a campaign to save the building, featured in a Dec. 2 article in The Wall Street Journal, by seeking preservationists or Buffett aficionados to buy it.

However, no one, including Mr. Buffett, showed enough interest to dissuade owner Roland Letendre from razing the 17,000-square-foot building.

“I had a [for-sale] sign out front for five years,” says Mr. Letendre, who bought the headquarters and surrounding historic mill buildings from Mr. Buffett’s conglomerate in 2000. “The building was in disrepair, and we decided to take it down and see what the future holds.”

Mr. Buffett bought the textile company in 1965 and used its cash flow to start building his investment company. He closed the unprofitable textile business in 1985.

- Kris Hudson

Slow Pop for Shops

Malls and shopping centers continued their sluggish recovery in the fourth quarter, ending the year with rents and occupancy levels still well below pre-bust highs.

Vacancy at retail properties fell to 9.8% from 10% a quarter earlier. But that is less than one percentage point lower than the peak vacancy rate of 10.7% reached in late 2011, at the height of the downturn.

On the positive side, the amount of occupied shopping-center space increased by more than 4.7 million square feet in the fourth quarter, the highest rate of “absorption” since the end of 2007.

There were 12.8 million square feet of absorption at shopping centers during all of 2013. But that is about half of what is considered a healthy pace.

“Vacancy is just too high right now. Landlords still don’t have a lot of pricing power,” says Ryan Severino, senior economist at Reis.

- Robbie Whelan

Switch-Up on the Shore

Miami’s hotel market is among the hottest. But that isn’t stopping the new owners of the famed Shore Club hotel from converting part of the property to condos—and seeking a new manager for the hotel.

Ziel Feldman, managing principal of HFZ Capital Group, and an affiliate of Fortress Investment Group acquired the South Beach hotel last month for about $175 million from real-estate company Phillips International.

Phillips will retain an ownership stake in the 1938 Art Deco property.

But there may be changes. Boutique-hotels specialist Morgans Hotel Group could be replaced as hotel manager, say people familiar with the matter. Luxury operators Rosewood Hotels & Resorts and Aman Resorts are among the many interested suitors, these people said.

Mr. Feldman says he expects the 309-room Shore Club to be recast as a hotel with around 100 rooms, with the remaining space sold as condos.

Losing the Shore Club would be a setback for Morgans, which is facing pressure from some investors to sell the company.

A spokesman for Morgans said the hotel company “continues to operate Shore Club under the existing management agreement.”